VA Offers $600M to Support Services for Homeless Vet Families

From a Department of Veterans Affairs News Release

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14, 2014 - Veterans Affairs Department officials today
announced the availability of about $600 million in grants through the
Supportive Services for Veteran Families program for nonprofit organizations and
consumer cooperatives that serve very low-income veteran families occupying
permanent housing.

"Those who have served our nation should never find themselves on the
streets, living without hope," VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki said. "These grants
play a critical role in addressing veteran homelessness by assisting our vital
partners at the local level in their efforts. We are making good progress
towards our goal to end veterans' homelessness, but we still have work to
do."

The Supportive Services for Veteran Families program is designed to assist
very low-income veteran families who are homeless or at imminent risk of
becoming homeless. The program employs a housing-first model, officials said, an
approach that centers on providing homeless veterans with permanent housing
quickly and then providing VA health care, benefits and services as needed.

Required services include outreach, case management, assistance in obtaining
VA benefits, and providing or coordinating efforts to obtain needed entitlements
and other community services, officials said. Grantees secure a broad range of
other services for participants, including:

VA is offering $300 million in fiscal year 2014 funds and $300 million in
fiscal 2015 funds, subject to available appropriations, officials said, and will
make award decisions based on a national competition.

In fiscal 2013, VA awarded about $300 million in Supportive Services for
Veteran Families grants for operations beginning in fiscal 2014 and is focusing
up to $300 million in surge funding on 76 high-priority continuums of care in
what VA officials called an unprecedented effort to end veterans' homelessness
in these communities.

The Supportive Services for Veteran Families program served more than 39,000
veterans and more than 62,000 total participants -- veterans and their family
members  in fiscal 2013, VA officials said.

In November, VA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced
the results of a HUD report that estimated there were 57,849 homeless veterans
on a single night in January in the United States, an 8-percent decline since
2012 and a 24-percent decline since 2010.